Nichiren … read the story of Sadāparibhūta [Never-Despising Bodhisattva] in a way that reflected — and perhaps inspired — his understanding of his own ordeals as a form of redemptive suffering. The prose portion of the “Sadāparibhūta” chapter says that those who mocked the bodhisattva suffered for a thousand eons in the Avici hell, but after expiating this offense, they were again able to meet him and were led by him to attain “the highest, complete enlightenment.” The verse section, however, suggests that the bodhisattva himself had “expiated his past errors” by patiently bearing the insults and mistreatment he received in the course of his practice. Nichiren focused on this second reading, encouraging his followers, and himself as well, by explaining that hardship encountered for the Lotus Sūtra’s sake would eradicate one’s past slanders against the dharma. “The bodhisattva Sadāparibhūta was not reviled and disparaged, and assailed with sticks and stones, for no reason,” Nichiren suggested. “It would appear that he had probably slandered the true dharma in the past. The phrase ‘having expiated his past errors’ seems to mean that because he met persecution, he was able to eradicate his sins from prior lifetimes.”

Nichiren took Sadāparibhūta [Never-Despising Bodhisattva] as a personal model and strongly identified with him. First, there were obvious parallels in their practice. “Sadāparibhūta was a practitioner at the initial stage of rejoicing,” Nichiren wrote, “while I am an ordinary person at the level of verbal identity. He sowed the seeds of buddhahood with twenty-four characters, while I do so with just five characters [Myō-hō-ren-ge-kyō]. The age differs, but the buddhahood realized is exactly the same.” This passage suggests that Nichiren saw Sadāparibhūta, like himself, as someone at the initial stages of practice who was carrying out shakubuku, planting the seeds of buddhahood in the minds of people who had never before received them. He saw other similarities as well. Both Nichiren and Sadāparibhūta lived long after the passing of the respective buddhas of their age, in an era of decline when there was much hostility. And both persevered in the face of emnity, enabling their persecutors to form a “reverse connection” (J. gyakuen) with the Lotus Sūtra. In short, Sadāparibhūta was for Nichiren an exemplar of practice for the latter age, and in this sense, he wrote, “The heart of the practice of the Lotus Sūtra is found in the ‘Sadāparibhūta’ chapter.”

Nichiren’s assertion that, for Lotus practitioners of the mappō era, the daimoku replaces cultivation of the traditional three disciplines in effect opened the merits of the sūtra to persons without learning or insight. Here he used the analogies of a patient who is cured by medicine without understanding its properties, or of plants that, without awareness, bloom when they receive rainfall. In like manner, he said, beginning practitioners may not understand the meaning of the daimoku, but by chanting it, “they will naturally accord with the sūtra’s intent.” In making such claims, Nichiren was not taking an anti-intellectual stance that would deny the importance of Buddhist study. Nor was he negating the need for continuing effort in practice or the value of the qualities that the six perfections describe: generosity, self-discipline, forbearance, diligence, and so forth, even though he rejected the need to cultivate them formally as prerequisites for enlightenment. It is important to recall that Nichiren often framed his teaching in opposition to Pure Land teachers who insisted that the Lotus Sūtra should be set aside as too profound for ignorant persons of the Final Dharma age. As we have seen, this assertion appalled Nichiren, who saw it as blocking the sole path by which the people of this age could realize liberation. In response, he argued passionately that the Lotus Sūtra’s salvific scope embraces even the most ignorant persons; in chanting the daimoku, all have full access to the merits of buddhahood, without practicing over countless lifetimes or seeking liberation in a separate realm after death.

[The] logic of total inclusivity underlies Nichiren’s explanation of the merits of the first stage of practice: rejoicing on hearing the Lotus Sūtra. “Since life does not extend beyond the moment,” he wrote, “the Buddha expounded the merits of a single moment of rejoicing [on hearing the Lotus Sūtra]. If two or three moments were required, this could no longer be called the original vow expressing his impartial great wisdom, the single vehicle of the sudden teaching that enables all beings to realize buddhahood.” In Nichiren’s reading, both the “first stage of faith” and the “first stage of practice” enumerated by Zhiyi on the basis of the “Description of Merits” chapter comprise “the treasure chest of the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment” and the gate from which all buddhas throughout time and space emerge.

The “six perfections” systematize the practices required of Mahāyāna bodhisattvas to achieve buddhahood: giving, good conduct, perseverance, effort, meditation, and wisdom, in the Kubo and Yuyama translation. Traditionally, each perfection was said to require a hundred eons to complete, one eon being explained, for example, as the time required for a heavenly goddess to wear away great Mount Sumeru, the axis mundi, if she brushes it lightly with her sleeve once every hundred years. Such was the vast effort that Śākyamuni was said to have expended over staggering lengths of time in order to become the Buddha; the perfections represent his “causes” or “causal practices” and form the model for bodhisattva practice more generally. The wisdom, virtue, and power that he attained in consequence are his “resulting merits” or “effects.” Nichiren’s claim here is that all the practices and meritorious acts performed by Śākyamuni over countless lifetimes to become the Buddha, as well as the enlightenment and virtuous attributes he attained in consequence, are wholly contained within the daimoku and are spontaneously transferred to the practitioner in the act of chanting it.